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Humberside Fire and Rescue Service reminds Twitter users to test their smoke alarm

11 April 2012

Humberside Fire and Rescue Service is reminding over 2,000 people to test their smoke alarm every week on Twitter as part of its 'Test it Tuesday' campaign and the service is urging Twitter users in the Humberside area to follow @humbersidefire so that they receive this important reminder along with other safety information.

Chris Blacksell, Assistant Chief Fire Officer for Humberside Fire and Rescue Service, said: "Smoke alarms are so important as they can alert people to a fire in their home earlier and give them extra time to escape. However, they can only do this if they are functioning properly. We advise that people test their alarm on a weekly basis.

"We recognise that this isn't currently part of many people's routine but we know this weekly reminder tweet is helping some people to get into the habit, and hopefully also reminds them to check on others who are less able to. That is one way our followers can genuinely save people's lives."

Matt Walton from the service's Corporate Communication team said: "We took the decision to join Twitter so that we could reach people that we would struggle to engage with through traditional methods and it has been hugely successful - we've now reached the 2000 followers milestone, which we're very pleased about. It makes us much more accessible to people as we're coming to them and using channels that they are comfortable with.

Matt continued: "Test it Tuesday has been a massive success and it's really been embraced by our followers. We've had lots of celebrities retweeting our messages to their followers including Sarah Beeny, Richard Madeley and Dr Christian Jessen.

"Our Test it Tuesday message reached over 800,000 people in one week alone."

As the number of people who interact with the service through social media grows it is hoped that it will give people an insight to the varied work the service does, educate people about key safety issues and be a warning system in the event of a major incident.